The Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton will have up to 100 extra beds after completion of the £700 million modernisation that is currently under way.
Each bed is expected to have five times more space around it than those in the old wards, allowing room not just for vital equipment but more treatment on wards.
And almost two thirds of the beds will be in single-patient rooms, with en suite toilets and bathrooms, while the rest will be in four-bed bays.
One of the hospital’s most senior doctors Peter Larsen-Disney said that most rooms would have sea views and patients would also have access to outside terraces and balconies with greenery.
Mr Larsen-Disney, clinical director for the modernisation project, gave a progress update to councillors yesterday (Wednesday 19 October) alongside University Hospitals Sussex chief financial officer Karen Geoghegan.
Labour councillor Amanda Grimshaw welcomed all the new facilities but asked why there would be just 100 extra beds given the cost of the project.
She said: “If you look at the hospital now – the chaos – there’s not enough room. People can’t get in. A&E (accident and emergency) is packed out. We’re spending all this money and only gaining 100 beds.
“I’ve been counting up when I’ve been in – for four babies, for the deaths of two parents and I sat with an elderly relative in the Barry wards for about two months.
“At no time in any of those experiences, while pushing out a baby, was I thinking what a wonderful view. I don’t think I ever needed five times the space.
“Are we giving these wonderful views and five times the space at the expense of leaving people without a bed for them to get in?”
At a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Mr Larsen-Disney said that giving patients more room was best practice – rather than just sticking them in a bed.
Labour councillor Clare Moonan, who chairs the committee, asked what the net increase in the number of beds would be once the new building had opened.
Mr Larsen-Disney said that the trust was creating space by moving patients into the new building from the old Barry building and from the temporary wards by A&E.
He said that the neurology department was moving out of the Millennium Wing – and down from the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH), in Haywards Heath.
The PRH, like the Royal Sussex, is run by University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust which was formed from a merger of two trusts last year.
University Hospitals Sussex has a budget of about £1 billion a year and serves Brighton and Hove, Mid Sussex and the coastal stretch of West Sussex from Shoreham to Chichester.
Mr Larsen-Disney has spent the past five years working on the Brighton modernisation project – known as the 3Ts, with the three Ts standing for trauma, teaching and tertiary care.
He added: “Behind each of these moves, we are freeing up space. It is not as simple as to say, when you move into 3Ts, you’ve got these extra beds. That’s true.
“As it stands at the moment, we have 54 unallocated beds in the new build when we move everything in. We’ve got this vacated space behind – and we are creating a larger bed base.”
At Hove Town Hall, Mr Larsen-Disney said that Level 5 of the 11-storey new building was at the same level as the emergency department (A&E) as well as the existing operating theatres.
He said that a new short-stay 28-bed ward was being created on the same level, with four new operating theatres and “interventional radiology suites”.
He added: “It has been carefully designed by the division of medicine to try to use it for patients who do not need to go into the main bed base and who can receive care over 48 to 72 hours and then be released back into the wild.
“Obviously, this is intensive in terms of therapies – OT (occupational therapists), physios, dietitians and so forth – to try to drive this process and make sure these patients have rapid throughput rather than become deconditioned sitting in an inpatient bed.”
Mr Larsen-Disney dismissed rumours about problems with the helideck on the roof of the Thomas Kemp Tower, saying that it is due to come into operation next year. It was due to receive patients 50 to 100 times a year.
He said that there was no truth in rumours that helicopter exhaust fumes would enter the air-conditioning system or that the new lift shaft was not the correct height.
The only time when helicopters would not be able to land on the roof would be when the Civil Aviation Authority said that the wind was too strong.
He added that the name of the new building was due to be announced by the end of the year after the public submitted about 700 suggestions which were currently being shortlisted.
Councillors were told that the new building was more than four times the size of the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital which opened on the Royal Sussex site 15 years ago.
Some 32 wards and departments would be moving into the new building next year, with clinics on the lower floors to make access easier.
The building has 11 storeys, including the ground floor, as well as two basement levels for parking.
All staff and patient beds are due to have moved from the Barry building into the new building by the end of next March.
A new cancer centre is open is planned to open in 2025 and the entire project is due to be completed in 2026 – 10 years after building work started.
Try reporting facts. At the end of the first phase there are 100 extra beds. There is more building work to come. And those beds…mostly private rooms.
I just hope we’ll be able to recruit the NHS staff necessary to support the patients.
They seem to be having a laugh. All that money for just a few (in the context of the money spent) beds. Unfortunate that Mr Larsen- Disney has the surname he does, but does the Disney relate to Mickey Mouse by any chance? You could not make this up. Suggest we call the new building the Donald Duck disaster.